I thought it showed promise at first. The characters where well acted and motivations and behavior was initially sound and consistent. Not that you end up caring as by the end of the story they have flushed all that away. I felt like the producers were laughing at me after conning me into thinking it was going to be good. Eddie Izzard is actually really good as the opportunistic survivor of a plane crash (we won’t go into the utterly ridiculous method he uses to survive the crash) who rises to power by making good use of his time. He collects guns, supplies and followers while every other sighted person is lamenting what has happened or wandering around with a sad face. He should play bad guys more often. At least they didn’t pick a cast of youngsters to make the story appeal to a younger audience. Which is probably good as it would just meant more pissed off people.

They deviated from Wyndham’s original plot more and more as they went along, until it got to the point the 2nd part of the story just made no sense. The whole we shouldn’t play god morality tale got a bit obvious and repetitive, especially the throw away scenes at the Nunnery. Talking of repetitive there is a series of flashbacks involving a tribal mask. Every 15 minutes we see the flashback with a little more detail each time. Yes we get it the mask is going to turn out to be important quit it with the flashbacks about it. Naturally it does end up being important but not in anyway that you might understand. They drip the Triffid venom through the eye slits in the mask and this makes eyes weep black and tears which has the side effect of making the Triffids ignore humans. What!? Why is that exactly? The protagonist Bill wonders aloud at one point on why the Triffids aim for the eyes but that is all we get. Why does this work? Is it because it changes the shape of the eyes and Triffids no longer recognise them as human? Do Triffids actually really like pandas? Why!? No explanation is given and the main characters happily fuck off to the Isle of Wight to fill a glass lighthouse with coloured sand, or something.

What is it lately with film and TV sacrificing coherent plot for action sequences? Not to mention really hammering home their messages like we are to simple to pick up on subtle parallels or decode metaphors. Am I just getting old a crotchety or am I just way smarter than the average TV/film producer thinks their audience is? Also the book and the original BBC version takes place over months but the events of this story seems to take place over a weekend. Everything is rushed and with Bill at one point seeming to recover from a bullet wound overnight.

They kept the Triffid mostly hidden at first preparing for a big reveal which didn’t happen because instead they just slowly showed us slightly more and more of the plant. Which is good because they looked totally shit and a big reveal would have been unintentionally hilarious. The new Triffids look like a giant Aloe Vera plant with a big purple knob-end on the top and are not at all scary or awe-inspiring. I mean in the 80s the BBC came up with this design:

Sure it takes a few liberties on Wyndham’s descriptions but it does look like a giant, tropical, meat-eating plant. They created those without a massive budget or CGI. For some reason these new modern triffids not only get up and walk they have roots that act like tentacles and allow them access to anywhere and to grab anyone from several metres away. And instead of the creepy and nerve shredding knocking of root on tuber the new Triffids squeak and squawk a whole language. They sound like a mix of Sweep and Joe Pasquallie put through an electronic voice synthesiser like Lilly Allen uses to sing in tune. And now the Triffids eat people with their roots in minutes rather than killing them and then hagging around to eat them slowly as they rot. Just like the modern fast moving Zombies these new Triffids sacrifice ominous presence for new action-friendly abilities.